


anchor up to me

by mosaicofhearts



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, But also... Soft, Canon-Typical Violence, Deadlights (IT), Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Mentioned Losers Club (IT), Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Protectiveness, Stanley Uris Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:02:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24131782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosaicofhearts/pseuds/mosaicofhearts
Summary: It turns out that Eddie has a lot to give.When Richie looks back on the now resurfaced memories of his childhood, he remembers the stolen glances and the excuses to touch, the way he would escalate jokes from one thing to the next in the hopes of getting just one laugh out of Eddie, because his laughter was like this fucking precious thing that Richie wanted to be the one to capture.“I was looking back. I was always looking back, Richie.” Eddie tells him once, three weeks after he’s all moved into Richie’s LA apartment. His face is dusted with rose, and he’s wearing his softest of smiles, the one reserved only for Richie.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 214





	anchor up to me

**Author's Note:**

> this is entirely self-indulgent! i just wanted to write soft reddie with a good sprinkling of angst tbh.
> 
> (also smut: it's more of a brief interlude because i haven't really written smut before (which is probably all too obvious), and it's probably not hugely explicit, but i wanted to be on the safe side!)
> 
> all feedback is super appreciated, as usual :)

It’s been two months since they’d been summoned back to Derry by Mike to defeat the demon clown of their childhood. Two months since Richie had walked into the Jade and been almost suffocated by a legion of emotions he hadn’t felt since childhood. Derry had never much felt like home to him, but there, surrounded by the losers once more and brought together in blood and trauma, he’d found his place once more.

Sinking back into his role amongst them was as easy as counting from one to three. It was – _is_ – muscle memory; the acceptance of an embrace from Bev, like he hadn’t spent the last twenty years of his life avoiding touch like the plague. The way he – all of them, really – still looked up to Bill even after all these years, sliding into formation around him like the army of soldiers they should never have had to be. Not as kids, and not twenty seven years later, either. A funeral march down to the sewers.

Eddie.

Sniping at him like second nature. Soothing the nips and bites of his words with a hip tap and a brush of the backs of their hands, feather-light and capable of being missed if it’s not something you’re looking out for.

Richie was looking for it. Richie was _always_ looking for it. 

It’s been one month and thirty days since Eddie shouldered his way into Richie’s room at the Derry Inn and told him that he wasn’t going home, that he couldn’t, that he wanted to go back to Los Angeles with Richie – if Richie would have him, that is.

It had pulled a startled wheeze of a laugh from Richie’s chest back then. As if Richie _wouldn’t_ have whatever it was that Eddie wanted to give to him. It had always been that way – he took and he took in the hopes that the aching within him would one day be sated, in the hopes that it would one day be enough, and it never was. _It never was_.

It turns out that Eddie has a lot to give.

It’s – fucking phenomenal, is what it is.

When Richie looks back on the now resurfaced memories of his childhood, he remembers the stolen glances and the excuses to touch, the way he would escalate jokes from one thing to the next in the hopes of getting just one laugh out of Eddie, because his laughter was like this fucking precious thing that Richie wanted to be the one to capture.

“ _I was looking back. I was always looking back, Richie_.” Eddie tells him once, three weeks after he’s all moved into Richie’s LA apartment. His face is dusted with rose, and he’s wearing his softest of smiles, the one reserved only for Richie.

The California sun has been good to him. He’s loose-limbed and painted golden. Richie wants to connect the freckles on his face, create constellations out of the stars in his eyes, tell the fucking world how in love he is.

He settles for telling Eddie instead. He drinks up the reaction it gets, every single time. He’ll never get tired of the way Eddie’s nose scrunches like he’s trying so hard not to smile, the laughter lines around his eyes telling the truth far better than anything else could. He doesn’t say it back yet, but Richie doesn’t mind.

He’s waited forty years. He can wait forty more, if that’s what it takes.

The thing is, Richie doesn’t remember it like Eddie does. He sees himself back then, obvious and loud with his love without ever saying it – drawing attention to him in a place like Derry like he always knew he was going to get out one day (he was; he did). His mind is something of an unreliable narrator, if Eddie is to be believed – and Richie thinks he is.

He never once let himself hope that Eddie might want him, too.

Until now.

*

They have a routine. Or, rather, Richie has a routine that Eddie knows nothing about, because it works better for the both of them that way.

He doesn’t sleep until Eddie does. Sometimes, he doesn’t sleep at all.

He curves his long frame around Eddie’s smaller one in their shared bed, protective with it in a way he thinks Eddie would both hate and love. He loves that Richie’s so _big_ – he’s reiterated that many times now, each of them flushed and shy with it – but he would hate that Richie’s thinking of himself as a something of a shield for him. Richie can’t help it. He keeps at least one hand on Eddie at all times, even in sleep; begins the night with a strong arm wound tightly around Eddie’s sculpted middle (which is ridiculously unfair, by the way, _what the fuck_ ) and rarely moves away from that. Sometimes, he wakes with a hand curled around Eddie’s wrist, like a quiet version of an embrace. Other times, Eddie’s on top of him, hair tickling his nose and head resting on the pillow of his chest.

He listens to Eddie’s breathing even out with his own held in. He tracks the movement of Eddie’s diaphragm with his eyes – the in, out of his breaths – and presses his hand so gently over Eddie’s chest. Over his heart. Listening to the steady rhythm of its beat until his own reflects the same.

It’s ridiculous. It’s overwrought.

If Eddie knew –

But he doesn’t.

He won’t.

Every time Richie closes his eyes, he watches Eddie die.

*

When the nightmares first begun, they were sharing different beds. Back when this thing between them was so new and so precious, back before Eddie was ready to start taking the things he defined as _big steps_ in their relationship. It was easier to manage, then. Richie didn’t have to worry that he would wake Eddie with the force of the sobs wracking through his own body. Richie didn’t have to worry that Eddie would find him curled at the edge of his bed with the moonlight illuminating tears on his cheeks and his head in his hands.

When Eddie first tells Richie he wants to sleep with him – just _sleep_ , in the most intimate of senses – they’re cooking. Richie is cooking. Eddie is watching with uncertain eyes and a furrowed brow that tells Richie all he needs to know about Eddie’s cooking skills (or lack thereof). It’s nice. He likes to be able to do this; to have this thing that he can do, that he’s good at, that will help him to take care of Eddie better.

He feels Eddie’s eyes on him, from where he’s leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms folded across his chest. Richie’s at the stove, a tea towel thrown over his shoulder, and three saucepans on the go, filling the room with the fragrant scent of _home_. Comfort foods. He knows a lot about them.

“I think we should sleep together.” Eddie says, and Richie almost drops the sauce he’s making right onto the floor – which would have been a disaster to clean up, and which he would definitely have made _Eddie_ do.

“Wh – What?” He says, feeling ridiculously like Bill.

He stares at Eddie with blown eyes, noting the way red is creeping up his collar bones and down his cheeks.

“Not like that.” Eddie shakes his head, a jerky, nervous movement.

Weirdly, Richie feels something like relief unfurl beneath his ribs. It’s not that he doesn’t want Eddie like that – jesus, _everyone_ knows he wants Eddie like that. But this is still new. Still – fragile. He doesn’t want Eddie to regret anything that they do here, in this house that is now their home.

“God.” He laughs shakily, leaning back against the counter for a moment, because his legs feel like they could give out and wouldn’t that just be the icing on the cake? “Warn a guy next time.”

“Sorry.” Eddie _does_ look sorry. He bites his lip, moves his eyes away –

Which… well, they can’t have that.

Richie bridges the gap between them, just to get two fingers under Eddie’s chin, tilting his face up towards his gently. “Hey, no. Don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” He’ll take what Eddie gives. Always. Forever. For however long Eddie wants to give it to him. “We go at your pace.” He cracks a grin. “Even if it means I’ll have blue balls for the rest of my life.”

“God, Richie,” Eddie’s face screws up and he’s pulling away from Richie’s grip, but he does smile. Small and twitchy, like he doesn’t want to, but he does anyway, and Richie memorises it. “You’re the worst.”

“So my critics say.” Richie’s cheerful with it, stepping back to the stove as though that moment didn’t happen. They’re good at this. Flitting between the layers of who they are together. “But… you were saying?”

“I was _saying_ – sleep together. Like _sleep_ together. In one bed.”

It makes Richie freeze. He wants to delight in how rosy Eddie looks, how he looks half torn between frowning and smiling, like he isn’t sure if he should want this or not. But he frets -- inwardly -- instead, because the nightmares haven’t stopped – still once a night, like clockwork, leaving him shaken and empty of anything but dread.

“Is that… okay?”

When he looks up again, Eddie’s watching him expectantly. His jaw is tight, the way it gets when he’s about to panic and try to go back on his words or his actions, and it’s enough to get Richie moving again.

“Eds.” He says, feeling fit to burst. “Sweetheart. Of course that’s _okay_. You don’t even need to ask.”

Eddie – whose mouth had fallen open on the ‘Eds’, no doubt to retort for the billionth time that that’s _not his name_ – just nods, a little on the edge of self-satisfied, and a whole lot of pretty.

It will be fine, Richie tells himself.

And it _is_ fine; at least for about a month or so.

*

_They’re back in the sewers. Eddie is hovering over him, bright eyed and excited, like they’re not back in this fucking hellscape, like there’s not an alien waiting to actually eat them._ _He’s telling him that he’s done it, that he’s killed the clown, and Richie – Richie wants to believe him. He wants to believe him, but he’s just seen something terrible in the deadlights, something that makes him feel like_ he _already might be dead_ –

_He doesn’t have time. No matter how this plays out, how many times they do this, he doesn’t have time. The claw rips through Eddie’s chest like a knife through butter, effortless with the way it eviscerates him. The bare-faced unconcealed shock on Eddie’s face makes Richie feel like_ he’s _the one whose just been impaled, but he isn’t, he isn’t, he wishes he was –_

_He clings to Eddie’s body like a lifeline. He sets him down gently – so gently – on the floor and all he can think is how much Eddie would hate this. How much he would hate lying here amongst the filth and the grime, how much he would bitch at them if he – if he could. Richie uses his own jacket to try and –_ fuck _, to try and keep Eddie’s insides from spilling out onto both of them like a pig sent to slaughter – and maybe that’s what they are. Maybe they’re all going to die down here._

_He begs and pleads with Eddie to stay awake, to keep his eyes open, to fight it, like he believes that he can keep him alive even though he has a gaping hole in his chest that screams_ deathdeathdeath _at him and –_

_Eddie’s eyes roll back into his skull. He’s ashen-faced and somehow already cooling to the touch, and his chest – his chest isn’t moving, he isn’t_ breathing –

*

Back in Los Angeles, at 2:30 am, Richie wakes with a start.

It takes him around thirty seconds for him to remember where he is; in a cold sweat, the cotton sheets of his bed (chosen by Eddie, because they’re hypoallergenic or some bull shit) twisted around his limbs like he’s been kicking at them. For a moment of blind hope, he thinks that Eddie isn’t there with him, somehow and –

He feels the weight of a hand on his shoulder, effectively pinning him to the bed. It’s a moot point. He’s exhausted, heaving for air, feeling like he’s just ran a marathon, and when his eyes meet Eddie’s they are blown wide and wild with fear.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” Eddie manages to say, just before Richie practically flings himself across the minute distance between them, arms dragging Eddie into his body a little too roughly.

He gets both arms around his back, clinging to him for a few seconds, before he’s dragging one through Eddie’s hair, pulling back to graze the other across the line of his jaw, his cheekbones, the crease between his brow, the lips that set his body on fire in other circumstances.

“Babe?” Eddie’s voice is pitched with distress, and it makes Richie’s heart lurch painfully. “Richie, what’s the matter? What happened –“

Richie swallows down the truth. It sinks like a stone to his stomach, where it settles uncomfortably. “Nothing.” He drops his hand from Eddie’s face like he’s been burned, but keeps the other curled over his shoulder like an anchor. “Nothing, I just – bad dream.” He manages through gritted teeth.

“That looked like more than just a bad fucking dream, Richie.”

“A really bad fucking dream, then.” He’s too tired for this. He can see the thin line of Eddie’s lips, can practically feel the way he’s vibrating to push the topic, and he’s just – he’s exhausted. All the way down to his fucking bones.

“Rich –”

“Eddie. Please.”

It’s uncharacteristic; such a soft-spoken plea from the mouth of Richie Tozier. Eddie goes rigid with it, just for a moment, and Richie flinches. _He fucked up, he fucked up, he fucked up_ –

But Eddie doesn’t go. Of course he doesn’t.

He folds his fingers around one of Richie’s wrists, tugging him gently back down to the bed; Richie goes easily, lets himself be manhandled and rolled until Eddie’s front of curving against his back, an arm around his chest where their hands can clasp over Richie’s hummingbird heart.

It’s awkward with the height difference at first, but they make it work, both of them relaxing into it. Richie lets himself be held, in a way he never has before, and it feels like forgiveness.

Eddie presses a kiss to the nape of Richie’s neck that turns his spine to liquid gold.

*

The thing is, Eddie isn’t fucking delicate.

Richie – _god_ , Richie knows this. He knows this better than anyone. He’s seen the fire in his gut and the spark in his eyes, seen the willingness that Eddie Kaspbrak has to put his own life on the line for the safety of his friends. He’s always been one of their bravest, though he wears the badge with an awkward gait like he himself doesn’t think it fits. It does. He’d faced off with the clown on two different occasions and _won_ – because he did. He did win.

He’s alive.

Richie has to remind himself of this.

There is warm blood running through Eddie’s veins. There is a heart that pumps his lifeline dutifully.

There is a scar.

The first few times they’d gotten naked together, Eddie’s shoulders had pitched forward, trying to hide the knotted skin across his sternum as though Richie would care. As though it would be anything less than reminder of his survival.

Richie thinks it’s something kind of beautiful.

It stills hurts.

He doesn’t blame himself, because – well, because he knows he can’t. Because he knows that they were all living their own versions of hell down there. Because nobody would blame him for not pushing Eddie out of the way, when all he had was a split second to react, a split second during which he was still coming back to his body, to his senses. But he wishes that he didn’t have to live with the burden of knowing.

It’s something he’s only told Stan; what he saw in the deadlights. Stan had looked at him with serious eyes and a serious mouth and had said (seriously), _you should tell him. He won’t blame you. Nobody would blame you._

He knows this, but he still can’t.

Instead, Richie watches over Eddie like it’s his life purpose; to look after him, to make sure that he doesn’t get hurt. He has a second chance at this, and he’s not going to fuck it up, not even if Eddie ends up hating him for it.

(God, he hopes Eddie doesn’t end up hating him for it).

He pulls Eddie in with an arm across his shoulders when they’re crossing the road, like it’s just another excuse to be close to him, and not something he feels like he has to do for his own sanity. He volunteers to pick up the take-out when it’s late and it’s dark outside. He does the cooking and watches as Eddie cuts up meat with a knife so sharp he thinks it could be another claw.

He notices the way Eddie narrows his eyes at him; the cogs that seem to be turning slowly but surely, and he hopes that he gets more time to have this before it all falls apart.

*

They make love. It’s a corny term that Richie would never have used before, but there’s no other way to describe what they do.

It’s gentle.

It’s nice.

He grazes his palms over every bit of Eddie’s body that he can reach. He counts his rib bones, fingers sliding so carefully into the indentations, along the knobs of his spine all the way down to where they’re joined; a touch that makes Eddie moan, long and low.

He loves Eddie like this. Who is he kidding? He loves Eddie always, but like this – _like this_. He’s slack-jawed and glazed eyes; lips bitten red and swollen, spit-slick where Richie can’t stop kissing him, pressing their lips together like there’s nothing better than that.

He lets his gaze wash over Eddie’s face reverently, his hands ghosting down his sides to his hips like he’s something holy, and he feels his dick throb with _wantwantwant_ , something deep and white hot tugging in his gut. He presses fingers too bruising into Eddie’s waist, burying his face in his neck in some form of apology.

Eddie doesn’t accept apology, though. Not here. Not now.

He doesn’t want _apologies_.

“Rich,” he keens into Richie’s ear, breath hitching with each slow thrust. “Rich, please.”

“What do you want? Tell me what you want.” His voice is urgent to his own ears, even though he knows – he always knows.

“More.” Eddie says with his voice, with his hands, with his eyes.

Richie wraps his hand around the curve of Eddie’s dick, hot and wet to touch, even though he knows it’s not what Eddie means. He bites back the guilt of the frustrated half-sob that Eddie lets loose, presses more apologies into his skin, swallowing down the throaty moan of his name when Eddie spills into his hand.

It hurts him – to not give Eddie what he wants, what he’s never been able to ask for until now. He thinks he might be doing more damage than good.

*

It comes to a head in the sweltering heat of the summer. Five months since they defeated It. Five months since Eddie came home with Richie and didn’t once look back, save for that one, awful phone call with his ex-wife that had left all of them a little stretched thing.

Richie’s waiting for it. He’s been waiting for it this entire time, really; waiting for the other foot to drop, for Eddie to stop looking at him from the corner of his eye with half curiosity and half annoyance and start saying something, instead.

They’re kissing, a soft slide of lips that turns into something more frenzied in next to no time. There’s a roughness to it that comes from the fact that it’s Eddie who instigated this, backing Richie up against the kitchen door with blown pupils and a steely resolution.

“You wanna take this to the bedroom, champ?” Richie manages to speak without his breath catching too much on the words. He’s proud of it.

“Depends,” Eddie steps back; it looks like it takes a lot of effort. He drops his hands from the door, where they had been bracketing Richie in. “Are you going to take off the kid gloves?”

It’s entirely accusatory.

Richie feels chilled, suddenly. Suspended with it. “What –“

“Don’t.” There’s no room for argument in Eddie’s words, or the way he swallows. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.”

Richie grimaces. It’s exactly what he was going to do, obviously, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation, never wanted to have this conversation. He slumps against the door.

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth?”

Like it’s obvious. Like it’s _easy_.

“I’m not a fucking _flower_ , Richie. You think I haven’t fucking noticed what you’re doing?” Eddie’s already shouting, his face red and angry and Richie hates himself for this. “Not just with this, with – with _everything_. You’re acting like I’m – like I’m _fragile_ or something, and I’m not! Have I not fucking proven that I’m not?”

“Eds --,”

“Don’t fucking _Eds_ me! Not now, Richie, for god’s sake.” Eddie presses a hand to his mouth like he’s trying to keep the words in. He takes a breath, pausing, before he finally looks Richie in the eye, and it’s – he looks _sad_. Richie never wanted to make him sad.

“You were never supposed to treat me like she did.”

And that – that is _raw pain_. Richie’s entire frame wilts, even as he half staggers forward a step closer to Eddie, who doesn’t move, to his credit. Like he’s trying to be brave all over again.

It fucking sucks that Richie knows he’s put him in this situation.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Eddie, please – “

“What? I don’t – I don’t understand what you _want_ from me, Richie, because it can’t be this! This isn’t _us_ – “

“I watched you die! _Twice_!” It rips from his chest with pure anguish, and Richie wants to take it back immediately. He wants to take the words back out of the atmosphere and swallow them back down, where they can’t hurt.

Eddie blinks at him. He looks – horrified. He looks scared.

“Rich,” he says uncertainty, too quietly. “What are you talking about?”

And Richie just – he can’t do this.

He’s half seated against the door, now, knees bent and holding his weight up on unsteady feet. He scrubs a hand over his face tiredly. Eddie steps forward, blocking some of the light over him, shadowing his vision.

“Richie.” His voice is level now, at least. “Please talk to me.”

He’s thrown back to his own ‘please’, a few months ago and just waking up from a nightmare, and it breaks his resolve a little.

“The deadlights,” he croaks. His throat is dry. He swallows and tries again. “I saw you in the deadlights.”

“What do you mean – ‘you saw me’?”

“What do you fucking think? Jesus. I saw It fucking _impale_ you and then it actually fucking happened –“

The words hang in the air and Richie squeezes his eyes shut against the silence. He doesn’t want to look at Eddie right now – he can’t. Will he see blame? Judgement? Something worse than that? He’s not sure his old heart would survive it, at this rate.

The barely there touch to his hand is unexpected enough to have him flinching with it, but Eddie doesn’t take it back, doesn’t move.

“Look at me.”

Richie shakes his head.

“ _Look at me_.”

“Bossy.” He mutters. It falls flat, neither of them finding humour in it, but he does raise his head. He focuses his vision and sees Eddie – still looking pale-faced and a little stricken, but pinning Richie’s gaze with the intensity of his own.

“I’m alive. I’m – I’m really fucking alive.” He laughs, like he can’t believe it himself. “Maybe I did die,” he swallows and Richie feels his own heart stutter in his chest for a moment at the word alone. “In the deadlights, maybe you did see that, but – I didn’t die. I’ve got the fucking scar to prove it.”

“You looked dead.” Richie lets loose, because apparently it’s honesty hour and once you start, you really can’t stop. Or maybe that’s just him – probably it’s just him. “You looked – you were – I thought you were _dead_ –“

He might be panicking a little.

Eddie taps his fingers on the side of Richie’s cheek, commanding his attention once more with just one inconspicuous touch. “Hey, stop. Come on. I’m here. Feeling better than I’ve ever felt in my life and that’s because of you, dipshit.” The admission pinks his cheeks. “So stop beating yourself up about this.”

Richie’s vision blurs with the sudden prick of tears in his eyes which is embarrassing and awful, except Eddie’s eyes look a little like they’re shining too.

“Is this what the nightmares were about?”

Richie can only nod, laughing helplessly when Eddie mutters, “ _idiot_ ” at him, like he should have just _told_ him. He’s right. He’s always right.

And then Eddie’s reaching for Richie’s hand, placing it over his own heart in a move so similar to the one that Richie makes when he’s sure Eddie is asleep that it makes him dizzy.

“See.” Eddie half whispers. “Alive.”

Richie loves him. He tells him as much.

(Later, when they go to bed and Richie bruises Eddie with his touch and his teeth the way Eddie has always wanted, Eddie will say it back).

(Richie might cry for the second time in a day; but if he does, it’s nobody else’s business).

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twitter [@decdlights](https://twitter.com/decdlights), and also on tumblr [@lndntown](https://lndntown.tumblr.com/), if you fancy following me!
> 
> thank you for reading. all feedback is appreciated!! :)


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